Time Travel too Crazy for DARPA

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Time Travel too Crazy for DARPA

Is time travel too crazy for the agency that wants to create shape-shifting robots? Seems like it, according to John Cramer, a physicist at the University of Washington. The crazy folks at DARPA told him his "time travel" experiment was a little too blue sky for them, according to this article in the Seattle Post Intelligencer:

The Seattle scientist who wants to test a controversial prediction from quantum theory that says light particles can go backward in time is, himself, running out of time.

*It's not a wormhole or warp in the space-time continuum. The problem is more mundane – a black hole in the time-and-money continuum spawned by today's increasingly risk-averse, "performance-based" approach to funding research. *

*"I guess you could say we're now living on borrowed time," wryly joked John Cramer, a physicist at the University of Washington. "All we need to keep going is maybe $20,000, but nobody seems that interested in funding this project." *

*It's a project that aims to do a conceptually simple bench-top test for evidence of something Albert Einstein called "spooky action at a distance." The test involves using a crystal to split a photon, a light particle, into two reduced-energy photons that – through careful manipulation – Cramer thinks could reveal a flash of time traveling backward. *

*The UW physicist has applied for funds from the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Both agencies have, in the past, funded far-fetched ideas and, on occasion, had big hits – such as the Internet. *

*DARPA recently sent out requests for proposals from researchers interested in developing shape-shifting, liquid robots (think Terminator 2) as well as cyborg insects (half robot, half normal bug). NIAC has funded similar projects and first took seriously science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke's idea of a geosynchronous elevator into space. *

"I've heard that NASA is closing down NIAC so I don't expect to get any funding from them," Cramer said. "And the guy from DARPA decided what I was trying to do was too weird even for DARPA."

*The military research establishment thinks testing a fundamental paradox in physics is weirder than seeking to build a sci-fi robot they saw in an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie? *

What a bummer. Yeah, I know I took a huge swipe at NIAC a few weeks back, but even I admit that from reading a bit about Cramer, he's got a creative mix of science and science fiction, along with a healthy dose of skepticism.

My problem with NIAC was that by focusing only on far-fetched space architectures, they may actually be missing out on real break-through science – you shouldn't have to have to market a time machine to get funding for high-risk science (and Cramer, by the way, isn't quite promising time travel).

So, yes, Cramer's got my sympathy. I'm not saying he should get funding, but I do think there should be more basic science funding available for him and other scientists to compete for, and you shouldn't always have to promise new-fangled inventions to get that funding.